the past will be the past (but the future is brighter)
by Spacedoutwrites
Summary: Post-endgame, Tony saved the world and survived. Life is finally getting back to normal. Peter goes out on patrol and everything is fine, until it's not.


This is my Irondad Fic Exchange gift for the lovely iamirondad :) When I was paired with you for the exchange, I have to admit, I was a little intimidated because I think you're awesome and I love your work so much! I really enjoyed writing this, and I hope you enjoy reading it! All the best -Hannah

The prompt I chose to use was Peter gets hurt on patrol. The title of this fic comes from the song January White by Sleeping at Last. Thanks for reading!

* * *

"Dang." Peter muttered.

Everything had been going fine, great actually.

It was a few months after everyone returned from their five year disappearance and things were finally getting settled down. Thanks to Doctor Strange, Tony was starting to get back on his feet after wielding the gauntlet. It hadn't been easy, but he was determined to get back to normal, or as close as he could get. Peter and May had a new apartment in Queens, school would start soon, and Spider-Man was finally patrolling again.

But now, it was only Peter's third afternoon back on the streets and there was already a knife in his thigh.

Admittedly, he had been a little distracted (maybe things hadn't been quite as great as Peter wanted to believe). Putting the suit back on had been harder than he expected it to be. The first few times he tried, he hadn't been able to put it on at all. Anxiety and fear plagued him. The feeling of crumbling into nothingness, darkness slowly but inevitably consuming him, invaded his thoughts like a dense, unwanted cloud. In his dreams, he watched Tony die over and over and over. The man hadn't even died in real life, but Peter's subconscious had decided to play out the worst case scenario repeatedly.

The feeling that the people of New York needed him only heightened his anxiety. All he wanted was to get out there and help people, but he couldn't, he wasn't strong enough. The feeling of utter incompetence was paralyzing, shaking him to his core. If he couldn't be Spider-Man, who was he?

It had taken time, especially time with Tony, for Peter to feel like he was ready to go out again. The nightmares were finally receding, the anxieties lessening. His first two patrols had been mostly uneventful and he had felt great afterward, but for some reason it was different this time.

A guy had stolen some lady's purse and run off with it. Peter was hot on his heels, hoping he could get the purse back to its rightful owner, and maybe web up the thief while he was at it, but while he was running, Peter's heart rate had sped up more than usual. His senses tingled, something felt wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He ignored the feeling as he caught up to the purse snatcher, but that turned out to be a big mistake.

The man turned as Peter grabbed his shoulder, immediately plunging the knife Peter hadn't noticed into his thigh.

As Peter stumbled back, the man continued running, turning down an alley and out of sight.

"Dang," Peter muttered, looking down at his right leg. The suit was already turning a darker shade of red. He shot a web up the nearest building and swung himself onto the roof.

He wanted to go after the attacker, but his vision was starting to get blurry, his head starting to spin. The stab wound wasn't that bad, right? He plopped down unceremoniously on the ground, careful not to disturb the knife that was still in his leg. The pain and the fuzziness reminded him of Thanos and the stones and the gauntlet and that stupid planet and watching the people around him turn to dus-

"Incoming call from Tony Stark," Karen said, interrupting Peter's spiraling thoughts.

"Dang," Peter said again, face scrunching up as a wave of dizziness rolled through him. "Decline the call."

"I'm afraid he's bypassing my control," Karen said. Before she could say anything else, the call went through.

"Peter?" Tony's worried voice rang in his ears. "Are you okay, kid?"

Peter opened his mouth to answer, but he felt like he couldn't breathe in enough air, so he gasped instead.

"Peter?" Tony's voice was growing louder and more concerned. "Can you answer me? What's going on?"

Peter gasped again, finally getting enough air. "I'm fine," he said, his voice rising about an octave higher than usual. "Just a little accident, everything's fine."

"I got a notification from your suit that said it was punctured by a knife," Tony said, sounding completely unconvinced of Peter's answer.

"Yeah…" Peter started. "But I'll be fine, I'm sure it'll heal up real quick."

"Absolutely not," Tony said sternly, "get to the tower now."

Peter's breathing was still irregular and labored, "I would," he said between gasps, "but I think I'm having a panic attack or something." He paused, "I- I think I'm just gonna lay here for a little while."

"I'm sending a suit," Tony said, his voice still agitated.

"Oh, you really don't have to," Peter said, "I'll be fine in a minute."

"Shut up Parker, the suit's already on its way."

Peter pulled his mask off so he could breathe more easily. His chest still felt unusually tight, his throat constricted. What was wrong with him? This wasn't exactly the first time something had gone awry while he was on patrol. He'd been shot, stabbed, knocked out, pretty much every trick in the book, but he could usually walk it off. This was different. There was a sense of dread and panic lurking somewhere inside of him. He felt as though, at any moment, he would crumble again, floating away, just dust in the wind.

At that mental image, he gasped again, tears were starting to gather in his eyes. He heard something approaching, but he was still laying on the roof, pinned down by his own intrusive thoughts.

"Hey, Pete," he heard Iron Man's voice, the outline of the suit coming into view. "I'm going to get you back to the tower, okay?"

Peter didn't respond, everything was blurring around him again.

"Peter!" Iron Man's voice sounded upset, almost like he was dying again.

The pain that blossomed from Peter's leg was suddenly amplified. _I'm dying._ Was all he could think. _Tony's right there, but I'm dying._ It was all too familiar. _He can't save me. No one can save me._ In his mind, he could imagine the tips of his fingers starting to disintegrate. _Please, not again._

He didn't realize it, but he was sobbing now.

Iron Man gently picked him up and held him close, careful to avoid jostling his leg. He was saying something to Peter, talking quietly to him, but Peter couldn't seem to understand what he was saying.

"I don't wanna go, Mr. Stark," he gasped.

The suit stopped talking at that, and after a moment they took off from the roof, not flying too fast, but getting Peter back to the tower, back to Tony, as quickly as possible.

When they landed on top of the recently re-acquired Stark Tower, Tony was waiting, Helen Cho by his side.

Tony hurried over to Peter, who was still being held by the suit.

"Hey, hey, hey," Tony said quickly, cupping Peter's face in his hands. "You're going to be okay bud, everything's going to be just fine, I've got you."

Peter took a shuddering breath, tears still streaking down his face. He let out an involuntary cry, unable to calm himself down.

Tony's thumb gently wiped at Peter's cheek. He ran a hand through the boy's sweaty hair. "We're going to take good care of you, Pete, your leg will be all better in no time. We have to get you down to the med bay now."

Tony held onto Peter's hand as they headed to the elevator, the Iron Man suit still carrying the boy.

Helen injected Peter with pain meds first, a dose strong enough for him to pass out within a few minutes. Under Tony's watchful eye, she removed the blade from Peter's thigh, cleaning and stitching up the wound before she left the meds and Peter's advanced healing to take care of the rest.

Tony stayed in the room while Peter slept, going through the footage from Peter's suit, trying to figure out what went wrong.

Peter's frightened cries stabbed at his heart, reminding him too of the worst day of everyone's lives. _"I don't wanna go, Mr. Stark"_ echoed around in his mind.

After a couple of hours, Peter started awake, a frenzied look in his eyes.

Tony was by his side in a heartbeat. "You're safe, Pete," he said. "Everything's okay."

Peter looked around the room frantically until his eyes settled on Tony. He relaxed, laying back down on the bed with a relieved sigh.

"How do you feel?" Tony asked carefully.

"I'm really tired," Peter said, rubbing at his eyes.

Tony nodded, "the meds really wiped you out." After a moment, he ventured further, "what happened out there?"

Peter's brow furrowed, "I don't know," he sat up gingerly. "I started out doing my usual thing. I helped a cat that was stuck in a tree, I stopped someone from breaking into a car, you know, what I always do. But then I went after this purse-snatcher and something felt wrong, but I didn't know what, and then I wasn't really paying attention, and then the guy stabbed me and ran away."

Tony leaned forward in his seat, "did you figure out what was wrong?"

Peter shook his head. "I guess I was sensing the knife, but that didn't really seem like the problem. It was the first time my senses were warning me that I was in danger like that since… well since I died."

Tony swallowed hard. "That's why you had a panic attack."

"Yeah," Peter said sheepishly. "I've felt it in my dreams plenty of times, but this felt so much like I was going to disappear again that it freaked me out."

"That would freak me out too," Tony said. "It did freak me out."

"I don't know what to do," Peter said, sounding discouraged. "I thought I was ready to be Spider-Man again, but at the first sign of trouble I flipped out."

"It's totally normal to feel that way," Tony reassured him. "It can take a long time to recover from something traumatic like that."

"I know," Peter sighed, "but I've been sitting around long enough. I just want to get out there and do something, start helping people again. I don't want the past to stop from doing stuff now."

Tony nodded, "I know how you feel. After Loki and his little army invaded New York, I felt like I was never going to be normal again. Any thought of aliens or wormholes or almost dying would set me off like nothing else. I didn't feel safe anymore and I let fear control me for a really long time."

"What did you do?" Peter asked. "How did you feel safe again?"

Tony paused. "I guess I learned to live one day at a time," he finally said. "I realized that I was taking the present for granted. The past is something that already happened and you just have to look to the future, let it pull you in, away from your past, away from all of the crappy stuff and into something new and exciting and beautiful."

"Or you could just discover time travel and go back and fix it," Peter suggested mischievously.

Tony reached out and messed with Peter's hair. "Only for you, kid. Overly sentimental speeches aside, I just want you to know that it's okay if you're not ready to go out as Spider-Man yet. That doesn't mean you aren't Spider-Man anymore or anything like that, it just means that you need to take a little extra time to recover."

Peter nodded. "I think I'll take another week or two off, see how it goes from there."

"Sounds like a good idea," Tony said. "We have to fix your suit now anyway."

Peter laughed, "that's true."

"I just finished some upgrades on the Iron Spider," Tony added. Once we get you in that, you won't have to worry about silly little knives anymore."

Peter smiled, "thanks, Tony."

"For what?" Tony asked, looking mildly confused.

Peter shrugged, "for looking out for me. It's really nice to know you'll always have my back."

Tony couldn't help but grin. "Of course, kid." He pulled Peter into a tight hug. "Always."


End file.
